Over time, moisture can accumulate within the structure of a building, causing premature deterioration and damage. This problem is particularly common in areas with high humidity and rainfall such as the Pacific Northwest.
To prevent moisture accumulation, particularly in exterior walls, it is beneficial to provide ventilation or drainage passageways within the exterior walls. As such, several weather resistive barriers have been used to force bulk water to drain from a wall structure. These weather resistive barriers employ a physical spacer technique to form an air gap through which the water will flow.
However, these weather resistive barriers may be susceptible to several problems due to their construction. For example, many of these weather resistive barriers can only be used in vertical applications due to the predominately single direction of their ridges and channels formed for water drainage. As a result, these weather resistive barriers may cause issues when used in non-vertical applications such as the gable ends of a roof or other angular installations. Furthermore, these weather resistive barriers run the risk of being crushed during installation, thereby incurring additional labor costs. Other weather resistive barriers provide non-compressible channels, but these barriers tend to exhibit poor drainage performance. Other weather resistive barriers use small line segments of rigid polymer to provide a relatively unidirectional drainage plain, but these weather resistive barriers often are manufactured in narrow widths, are very expensive, and may even require adhesion to a second weather resistive barrier.
Therefore there at least remains a need in the art for an inexpensive drainage weather resistive barrier with superior multidirectional drainage properties, sufficient width, and a sufficient resistance to damage during installation to prevent additional installation labor and costs.